The Things You Can See From a Doorway
by EllisBelle
Summary: Iris finally sees Justin's tattoo . . .
1. Default Chapter

The Fine Print: As always, the great Dan Knauf and the folks at HBO own _Carnivale_ and all its characters. However, it's beginning to look like they are never going to show us this scene, so I had to write it myself.

Author's Note: I took a little liberty with the description of Justin's tattoo.

**The Things You Can See From a Doorway**

By EllisBelle

As he dressed for the day, Justin Crowe caught a strange image in the mirror out of the corner of his eye. He mentally braced himself for the onslaught of another vision. They were coming more and more frequently now, each one more horrible and disturbing than the next. However, as he turned to fully face the glass, he saw that the image was not that of the figure he had come to know as the Usher or even that of the boy, his enemy, but of his own body now transformed by the massive tree tattoo. Two twin trunks intertwined, battling for dominance across his chest, their branches reaching out in twisted gnarls, like arthritic fingers. He studied his own reflection, lost in following the twisting maze of branches.

"Oh, sorry. I thought you were out . . ."

Her silence cut through the room, louder than any scream could have been.

Justin turned his head quickly to see Iris standing in his doorway, staring wide-eyed at the image on his back.

He looked back into the mirror, stared deeply into his own eyes, barely recognizing himself. Justin watched in the reflection as Iris slowly walked towards him with the vacant expression of a sleepwalker. He watched as she let the laundry she had been carrying fall forgotten onto the floor beside the bed. He watched her lips as they moved silently, tried to read them, but was truly afraid to know what she was saying. He closed his eyes unable to watch her any longer.

He hadn't told her about the tattoo, had avoided letting her see him undressed. As angry as she had been with him lately, that hadn't been hard to do. He'd let her go on believing whatever she wanted about his late night trips to town. Let her imagine scenarios and exchanges with other women. It had been easier to let that come between them than to admit to the terrible transformation he had undergone. Easier to face her locked door than the horror he might have found in her eyes.

Without opening his own eyes, he knew she was standing behind him now. He could hear her breath, irregular, loud against the oppressive silence in the room. Knew that she was trying to control it, to steady it, but was losing. Knew from experience that if he turned around and put his palm against her chest, he would feel it shuddering with emotion.

Like someone reaching towards a fire, Iris slowly moved her hand towards his back, her fingertips hovering over him, almost touching his skin, yet leaving the barest fraction of space between them.

Justin exhaled in relief when Iris finally touched him, when she rested her forehead against the back of his neck and he could feel her breath warm on his skin. One hand fell to his waist, her nails kneading into the inky, tangled roots surrounding him. Her other hand slowly roamed his back, her fingers tracing the trunks and branches cut into his skin. Her fingers cool against his still fevered flesh, Justin swallowed hard as he felt his body begin to respond to Iris's long-familiar hands.

"I've missed you."

Justin's words hung naked in the air, as he turned around to face his sister. Assaulted now by the new images on his chest, Iris stood silently in front of him. She couldn't or wouldn't look him in the eyes. He bent his face down towards hers, trying to draw her out. "Iris," he pleaded gently. She only shook her head in response. "_Irina_. Please look at me." When she still would not, he took her face in his hand, brushing his thumb over her cheek and snaking his fingers into her hair, to tilt her face until she was forced to meet his eyes. With his other hand on the small of her back, he brought her hips flush against his, making sure she could feel the effect she still had on him.

Despite Justin's efforts, Iris kept one hand between them, palm flat against his chest, distancing them and anchoring herself as she felt herself being drawn back into him. More than anything she wanted to just give in. Closing her eyes, she could almost pretend that things were the way they had always been. No fires and no martyrs. No talk of sacrifice and redemption.

How had this happened? Iris's mind raced over the last few months. How could she not have known? She looked again at the tattoo. Rubbed her hand roughly against it, trying to erase it. But its indelible mark still lay heavy and dark against her brother's skin. She looked at Justin again and did not recognize him—her own flesh. Until the moment she walked into his room this morning, she had known every inch of his skin as well as she knew her own. Now he stood before her a stranger.

"Alexsei, what have you done?"

Justin frowned, cut by her voice. She sounded as if her heart were breaking.

He grasped her by the shoulders, desperate to make her understand. "I'm finally becoming what I was destined to be."

As Iris continued to stare at him in dawning horror, Justin pulled her to him once again. "Oh, Iris," he whispered, his lips against her hair. "If you could only feel what this is like. This . . . this power."

Without warning, she twisted violently in his arms, but he regained his grip on her shoulders before she could escape.

"Who are you?" she cried. "I don't know you."

Justin's hands fell away from her shoulders. Their eyes locked, and for a brief moment, Justin saw himself reflected in Iris's eyes. She turned from him and fled from the room, as he stood stunned, watching her vanish into the hallway. He closed his eyes. He opened them again, black and empty—the monster she had seen.

"Irina!"

_To Be Continued. . ._


	2. Against the Wall

_The Fine Print: As always, the great Dan Knauf and the folks at HBO own Carnivale and all its characters. However, it's beginning to look like they are never going to show us this scene, so I had to write it myself. _

**The Things You Can See From a Doorway**  
By EllisBelle 

Iris was nearly at the bottom of the stairs when she felt his rage wash over her, battering her like a breaking wave.

"Irina!"

As the sound of her name echoed through the house, Iris frantically scanned the living room but there was no one else in the house. Only the two of them. And Norman. Iris's eyes focused on Norman's door.

She was reaching towards the doorknob, could almost feel its cool surface turning beneath her palm, when she felt his fingers close around her forearm like a vise.

Justin spun her around to face him and with a feral snarl, pushed her back into the wall. Justin's angry face towering above her was suddenly replaced by a bright flash of pain as her head hit with enough force to jar her teeth. Iris felt tears welling up as she blinked against the pain and mounting fear. Justin had never willingly hurt her before. She desperately wanted to believe that he wouldn't hurt her now. But she had seen the haunted, vacant faces of all those girls, seen their broken and scarred bodies. He had made sure she had seen them all.

"Let me go, Justin," she warned, her voice taking on a practiced edge. Years of experience had taught her how to use that particular tone to put her little brother back in his place. Iris prayed that it would work now, that she could somehow gain the upper hand.

Justin stared intently down into his sister's face, narrowing his eyes in contemplation. He released her arm, left it throbbing. Iris unconsciously rubbed at it with her other hand, as the blood rushed through it once again. She meet Justin's gaze defiantly, refusing to let him see her fear. His expression had gone cold and unreadable.

And then he laughed. "_That_, my _dear_ sister, doesn't work on me anymore."

Iris's lower lip shook with barely contained anger. How dare he mock her? She couldn't stand to look at him, so she looked past him, over his shoulder, towards the window. The diffused morning sunlight played out through the oblivious, swaying leaves of the tree, casting dancing, changing shapes across the floor. It reminded her of a broken mirror, how the faint lamp light had reflected and shone in each hateful shard as she spread it across the floor, how the reflections grew brighter as she crawled through it towards her makeshift alter, how strange it was that the bloodied pieces could still shimmer even while she pried them from of her flesh. Her face burned as she remembered her desperate prayer. Tears started to flow freely down her cheeks before she could stop them. Her penance.

She had to get away from him, didn't want him to somehow read her act of supplication—her penance was hers alone. She wanted to be outside in the light, to feel the breeze cool across her skin. She tried to shove past him, to go to the porch, but he blocked her efforts, moving his body closer to hers, caging her against the wall with his arms.

The tattoo burned on his chest in front of her, filling her line of vision. She put her hands flat against his chest, spread her fingers out against his skin, until they seemed like mere extensions of the inky branches. Her fingers gradually bore down into his chest, the nails digging into his skin, leaving crescents of blood in their wake.

"Iris." She began to shake violently.

He grasped her wrists, easily encircling both of them with his hand, wrenching them above her head, pinning them to the wall.

"Be still."

He breathed out the words, barely above a whisper. Beneath his fingers he felt her muscles relax, the knots of tension unknitting, leaving her body liquid against his.

Justin smoothed his free hand lovingly down her face.

"That's better, now isn't it?" he said, pressing his mouth to hers in a chaste kiss even as he trailed his finger down her throat to toy with the top button on her dress. He laid his face beside hers, his lips almost touching her ear. "Why must you constantly fight me for control?" he asked. "Oh, Iris. It doesn't have to be like this." He kissed her neck just below her earlobe, let his lips linger on her pulse. He waited for the shiver that had followed that touch a thousand times before. But she remained still and hollow. He released her wrists, letting her arms fall down to her sides. Studying her face for any reaction, he ran his hands up her arms, letting his fingers creep beneath her sleeves, to caress her forearms.

He kissed her forehead, kissed her cheek, moved his hands to her throat and slid them down. "I don't want to have to punish you—to hurt you," his voice trailed off as he began to unfasten the buttons that ran down the front of her dress, one after another. A casualty to his growing haste, one tiny black button unthreaded and fell to the floor, forgotten. "But you are so willful."

His hand slid inside her dress, teasing across her breast, through the thin material of her slip. "So very willful." He grabbed handfuls of her dress and pulled it up over the tops of her stockings. Justin leaned forward against her, pressing his hips to hers, crushing his painful arousal between them.

Grasping at her thigh, he pulled her leg up around him, pulling her closer to grind himself against her through their clothes. Justin let his hand roam beneath her dress, relishing the feel of her silky stocking and her even silkier thigh beneath his hand. _He could almost feel her stocking clad legs rapped around his waist, tightening—as she tightened around him, crying out._ When his hand grazed around her knee, he felt something unfamiliarrough. He released her leg, lowering it to the floor and looked at her in growing concern. He dropped to his knees before her. He slowly pulled her stocking down to reveal a network of cuts, raised like pulsating veins across her knee.

He had a sudden revelation of her kneeling, praying. Shining bits of mirror, reflecting her pain, biting through her skin. Her penance. Her knees weeping blood. He had done this to her just as surely as if he had laid the trail of broken glass himself and dragged her across it.

Justin ran his fingers lightly over the cuts, some of them still puckered and raw—bent his head and nipped at the bit of unbroken skin beside her knee, darted his tongue at an unmarred freckle—_Iris's freckles. They were inexplicable. No one else in their family had them. At least, he couldn't remember it if they did. She, in a rare vein of vanity, hated them. But he had always loved them. They accentuated her body—scattered across her shoulders and outlined her collarbone, spread across her thighs like constellations. But the dusting of freckles across her knees had always been his favorite. He had tried to count them one night, kissing each one in turn. He started at her toes and managed to reach her left knee before she couldn't stand it any more and drew him up into her waiting arm. _

He closed his eyes in shame and revulsion. His hand reverently caressed the back of her knee, as he moved his lips against her sacrificed skin, silently mouthing two words into her—"Forgive me".

"Alexsei."

He looked up at her, surprised to find her blue eyes watching him, her fists clutching handfuls of her dress until her knuckles turned white—surprised that she had somehow regained her will.

"That doesn't work on me," she whispered hoarsely, echoing his own words in answer to his unspoken question.

Justin fell back away from her, watching her as if she were one of his visions.

Iris's hands let the crumpled material from her dress fall; only to disappear beneath it, then reappear sliding her underwear down her legs. When she tried to step out of them and her shoes at the same time, she stumbled and bumped ungracefully against the wall.

That simple awkward movement. It took all of Justin's practiced self-control not to touch himself, to bring himself to some sort of release, as he watched her. At that moment she reminded him so much of the skinny little girl who had once been his whole world. A wave of possessiveness washed over him. She was his and his alone—his own flesh and blood, his lover. He was the only one who had ever really touched her, who had seen her like this—the only one who had ever been inside her, body and soul.

Iris held her hand out to her brother in unmistakable invitation. A pained expression shadowed her face when he did not take her hand.

Still kneeling before her, he pushed his hands back up her legs, spreading them as he went. His sister's legs had almost been his undoing that night he first went to Chinatown to begin the painful process of his transformation. The site of her legs stretched out on the couchbare feet, smooth calves, and what he knew lay hidden beneath the bottom of her slip. Princes and prophets alike threatened to be forgotten when she stirred and he watched the play of muscle in her inner thigh. She was his one weakness. Eve offering the apple. The one thing that could tempt him to forget.

He teased the skin at the juncture of her thighs with his mouth. She sighed and opened her arms towards him, once more trying to draw him up to her, but he made no move to join her. Instead he dipped his head and buried his face between her legs. Mortified, Iris tried to get away from him once again, but she was caught between his seeking mouth and the unbending wall. "Alexsei, what. . ." she gasped. She grasped down at his face and shoulders trying to pull him away, but he would not relent. He only pressed his mouth harder into her. "Don't. What are you do" her words were cut off by a sharp intake of breath as his tongue found her center. His hands grasped her more firmly as she protested, his thumbs pressing into the dips above her hipbones.

Once again she fought. Fought against him, his mouth, and the wonderful, terrible things he was doing to her body. Fought against herself and the way her body was responding. Fought just to pull the air in and out of her lungs.

As his mouth continued its assault, her hips unconsciously thrust forward. Her hand clutched at his hair, holding him closer to her, as the other grasped for support against the wall, her nails digging thin grooves into it. She finally relinquished her grip on her self. Iris quit thinking, let her body take over, let the lower angels rule. A chorus of moans and gasps, each one more uncontrolled than the next broke from her lips.

Iris covered her mouth with her palm, frightened by the sounds she was making. She felt the knot of exquisite tension start to build in the balls of her feet, up to her calves, tightening her thighs, up into her stomach and spreading through her chest. When he grazed his teeth across her, Iris's whole body exploded. All her control, her sense of cohesion, shattered like the mirror.

To Be Continued . . .


	3. Still Against the Wall

_The Fine Print: As always, the great Dan Knauf and the folks at HBO own Carnivale and all its characters. However, it's beginning to look like they are never going to show us this scene, so I had to write it myself._

**The Things You Can See From a Doorway**

Chapter 3

After what seemed like an eternity, Iris opened her eyes, trying to put together cohesive thoughts and marveling that she was still standing. Justin was standing in front of her. Soothing his hands down her cheeks. Taking her face in his hands. Kissing her. His mouth.

Iris realized with a blush that she could taste what must have been herself on his lips. Oh god, what his mouth had just done—where it had been. Iris rubbed her forehead with her hand, covering her face in the process and hoping to hide her burning cheeks.

He smiled down at her as if he were reading her mind once again. He moved her hand away from her face and kissed her slowly, pulled her lower lip between his teeth and sucked it into his mouth, savoring it. She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the emotion that flooded her chest.

She trailed her fingers down his chest, along the tree's dark trunk to rest on the band of his pants, before undoing the first button, then pausing.

He had been watching her hands, his breathing becoming more labored. He throbbed at how near she was. How close her hands were to him. He hadn't felt her hands on him in months. What he wanted was so near now. When she stopped, he looked up to meet her eyes, his own hands taking over her task only to have them covered with her own, stopping him.

"No more secrets, Alexsei."

At that moment if she had asked him to cut his heart out and feed it to her, still beating, he would have. Justin leaned his head close to hers and whispered in her ear, so quiet she wasn't sure he had spoken at all, but that one word echoed in her mind.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing him fiercely, helping to pull herself up even as he lifted her higher onto the wall, pressing his hips into hers to keep her from falling. Her legs wrapped around his waist as he slid inside her.

Neither of them moved, overwhelmed by the sensation of being together again, put back together again to a whole. Iris looked down between their joined bodies. She found it hard to tell where his skin ended and hers began, as if the ink were creeping in tendrils beneath her skin too.

She bit her lip to keep from crying out as he began to move inside her . . . when they moved together again, it was with the practiced movements, perfected over years, of old lovers. Knowing where to touch each other—his mouth unrelenting at the hollow of her throat—what to whisper at the right moment—his name on her lips repeated like a prayer.

He felt her legs tightening around his waist-as she tightened around him—crying out, and the sound of her name once more filled the house, as he came inside her.

* * *

Her fingers lazily tracing patterns across his neck as their breathing returned to something resembling normal and he still leaned against her, Iris's gaze fell across the room to the screen door. A dark figure stood out in stark contrast against the white porch and the blue sky surrounding it. Startled, Iris started to push herself away from Justin. 

"Someone's outside."

He turned his head, following her gaze. Someone was sitting on the front steps. He looked back to Iris to see her hastily buttoning her blouse. Justin sighed in annoyance. "Get rid of whoever it is," he said, dropping a quick kiss on Iris's cheek.

Iris didn't answer, but walked unsteadily across the room, straightening her dress, trying to smooth out the telltale wrinkles. Reaching the door she paused and looked over her shoulder—Justin had disappeared upstairs. She ran her hands over her hair, tucking an errant bit behind her ear, before opening the screen door.

The door creaked as she pushed it open but the person on the steps did not look in her direction or show any other signs of awareness for that matter.

Iris could tell now that it was a woman—a young woman. Her dress, really no more than a tattered shift, may have once been white but now it was dingy and stained from the dust. Iris had no doubt that this person had wondered up from the migrant camp, probably fresh from weeks or even months on the road.

Iris lay her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Can I help you with something, dear?" She secretly breathed a sigh of relief as her voice came out much steadily than it felt. God, what had this girl seen through the door?

The girl finally turned her head to face Iris. She was taken aback at how haunted the girl's dark eyes were. "Is there something I can do for you?" she asked again, recovering herself.

The girl didn't answer at first, seemed to be debating something within herself. Finally she replied, "I need a job and people down in the camps said that you all were looking for a new maid."

If she had been sure the girl hadn't seen them, Iris would have sent her packing. But what if she had seen? What would she tell the rest of their followers?

"We were—I guess we still are, actually," Iris forced herself to smile sweetly down at the girl. "How long have you been waiting out here?"

The girl hesitated. "Just a little while, I guess."

_She knew._ Iris tried to remain calm, to keep her face neutral. They would have to deal with this problem quickly.

"How rude of me." Iris offered her hand to the girl. "I'm Iris Crowe. Brother Justin's sister."

The girl looked visibly relieved to hear that and taking Iris's hand, she stood up and smiled awkwardly at her.

Iris almost laughed. The idea that she had just seen the two of them, the famous minister and his sister, together, was so abhorrent to the girl that she could easily convince herself that what she had seen had been a hallucination, that she had been mistaken.

"You must be parched. Come inside and I'll get us some nice lemonade while we talk about the position."

"Thanks."

Iris held the screen door open for the girl, letting her pass in front of her. "What's your name, dear?"

"Sofie."


	4. Norman's Room

_The Fine Print: As always, the great Dan Knauf and the folks at HBO own Carnivale and all its characters. However, it's beginning to look like they are never going to show us this scene, so I had to write it myself. _

_Author's Note: This one occurs simultaneously with Chapters 2 and 3 in Norman's POV._

**The Things You Can See From a Doorway**

Chapter 4

_They clung to him that night beside the river,_ _the boy and his sister, terrified and shivering, until he promised they could come home with him. Norman finally settled them into the back of the carriage, wrapping them in a blanket against the cold night air. Minutes later, he glanced over his shoulder to see them curled together, asleep, her thin arm thrown protectively around her brother, his head tucked into her shoulder. _

_Norman smiled to himself at the strange and marvelous ways of God. It had been almost a year since they had lost their own child, a daughter, stillborn and too early. Rose knew that she would never have another child and the doctors agreed. Norman watched his wife everyday as she struggled with the loss of what she had looked so forward too. Now perhaps, he dared to hope, these children would fill some of that void. _

_Well into the night, Norman finally found himself pulling the carriage to a halt in front of his home. He stepped down and walked around to the edge of the carriage. The children were still sound asleep, their faces hidden now, beneath the blanket. "We're home now children," he called, smiling at his own words, but they still did not stir. He reached in and gently pulled the blanket away from their sleeping forms. The blanket slipped from his hand as he stumbled back away from the carriage, doubling over to be sick—the children, the boy and his sister, their small bodies, pale and bloated, the skin around their eyes and lips blue, wet hair matted against their faces, still clinging to one another . . ._

Norman Balthus blinked his eyes against the morning sun, praising God that it had just been a nightmare. He tried to rub his hand across his face to smooth away the traces of the dream but to his dismay he found he could not lift his arm. It was frozen next to him atop the sheets. As he slowly took in the room around him, Norman remembered the events of the last year—his stroke, the fire, Justin's perversions and blasphemy.

"_Irina!"_

Norman's hand curled instinctively into a gnarled fist as Justin's angry voice broke through the silence of the early morning and interrupted his thoughts.

He heard Iris's hurried footsteps in the living room and shivered nervously as he realized she was heading towards his door.

Norman knew that Iris had fallen under Justin's evil influence, had committed unthinkable murders while under his sway. She had been corrupted by the demon in Justin, by the evil that was his adopted son. Norman was beginning to realize just how dangerous Iris herself was. Each morning he watched in growing fear as piece by piece her humanity seemed to be slipping away. But try as he might to the contrary, he still thought of Iris as his daughter, hoped that one day she might be saved.

He heard Justin's footsteps thundering across the room, a startled gasp from Iris drowned out by a roar, then a sickening thud, as if a body had hit the wall. Frustration overwhelmed Norman as lay paralyzed. The tension between the two of them had been almost unbearable since their move to the new house. Norman had witnessed their arguments, seen Iris desperately trying to protect her place at her brother's side, watched as Justin punished her and plotted with others. He listened as they continued to argue until Justin's chilling laughter rang out. Then silence dropped over the house. Norman strained to hear what was happening on the other side of the door.

_"I don't want to have to punish you—to hurt you . . . but you are so willful."_

Norman struggled to turn his head towards the door, alarm etched across his face. He caught something sickeningly familiar in Justin's voice—"_You're mother taught you how to pray, didn't she?" _ No, not this.

_". . . so very willful."_

Norman closed his eyes. Please God, no. Not his own sister.

The maids, one after another, had been appalling enough, but how could Justin do this to his own sister? Norman knew now that the Justin he had known was lost forever. The old Justin had loved his sister, had been devoted to her.

Trapped inside his own body, powerless to stop what was about to happen, Norman silently called out to God. He prayed for his children's souls and for his own strength.

He prayed that it would at least be quick.

He lay, waiting for the horrible noises to begin—the demonic wails, the feral howls. He waited for her anguished screams and pleas for help. But they did not come.

He could hear only broken snatches of breathing, followed by periods of terrifying silence. Then Iris's pleading voice, _"Alexsei, what. . .Don't. What are you do" _

Is this my punishment, my punishment for saving the children, those innocent children all those years ago by the river? Norman thought. To be frozen, forced to listen as his son defiled—raped—his own sister.

He cringed as she moaned, continued to pray as her broken gasps and sighs grew louder.

Sounds of pleasure. Norman narrowed his eyes. My God, she was enjoying it. "No." Norman forced the single word out with all his strength but it came out as little more than a hoarse whisper. His body shook in anger and revulsion.

How long had this been going on—months, years? Norman felt bile rising up into his throat at the thought that it had probably begun under his own roof, in the house where he and Rose had raised them and loved them just like their own.

The pieces slid into place with startling clarity. All the touches that lingered just a little longer than necessary, the adoring looks, the unsettling kisses goodbye . . .

Iris's cry pierced the room. Norman's experience was limited to just one woman, but some sounds were unmistakable.

Thank god Rose would never have to know about this. Norman prayed that the lord would be merciful to him as well and let him die before he had to look into either of their faces again.

_"No more secrets . . ."_

Trapped, Norman listened as Justin's groans joined Iris's, listened to the muffled sound of a body bumping in frenzied rhythm against the wall.

Please, God. At least let it be quick.


End file.
